Douban.com (Chinese: 豆瓣; pinyin: Dòubàn), launched on March 6, 2005, is a Chinese SNS website allowing registered users to record information and create content related to film, books, music, and recent events and activities in Chinese cities. Douban also owns an internet radio station, which ranks No.1 in iOS app store as of 2012. Unlike Facebook and Renren, Douban is open to both registered and unregistered users. For registered users, the site recommends potential interesting books/movies/music to them in addition to serving as a social network website and record keeper; for unregistered users, the site is a good place to find ratings and reviews of books/movies/music.

Douban has about 53 million registered users in 2011.

The site serves Pan-Chinese users, and its contents are in Chinese. It covers works and media in both Chinese and foreign languages. Some Chinese authors and critics register their official personal pages on the site.

Founder

Douban is founded by Bo Yang. Yang had majored in Physics in Tsinghua University before he attended University of California at San Diego as a PhD student. After having received his PhD in computational physics, he worked as a research scientist at IBM. Later, he returned to China, becoming the CTO of a software company founded by one of his friends. In 2005, Yang started to create a web 2.0 site for travelling named Luzong (驴宗), initially a one-man project at a Starbucks in Beijing. In a couple of months, however, the site was transformed to what is now known as Douban.com.

Douban may refer to: